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The 12 Week Year — Chapter-16: Keeping Score
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Chapter 16 Keeping Score Measurement drives the execution process. It is your touchstone with reality. Truly effective measurement combines both lead and lag indicators to provide the comprehensive feedback needed for informed decision making. It is the feedback loop that lets you know if your actions are effective. Adam Black discusses the impact that his simple and daily measurement system had on his results. The 12 Week Year was suggested to me by a business partner at the end of 2011. It was perfect timing. After reading the book several times I knew without a doubt that this system fit me perfectly. I am the typical Type A personality, hard charging, aggressive, but sometimes missing the small details. With the 12 Week Year, I was able to slow myself down and systematically project what I wanted to achieve in a 12 Week Year in order to ultimately reach my longer-term objectives. I found that the beauty of it was that I could adjust my 12 week plans based on how my numbers moved. To help me stay focused on my highest value tasks, I created a simple 12 week calendar as a visual aid to measure my progress. The calendar keeps track of my two key daily lead and lag metrics every day. When I go home each night, I now know exactly where I stand in terms of my 12 week goal. By tying these daily metrics to reaching my 12 week goal for dollar volume and units, I saw an increase of 65 percent in unit and dollar volume in 2012! As a result of applying the 12 Week Year, I’ve also already met my company’s standard to qualify as a Top Producer and will be rewarded with a trip in 2013.
To say that the 12 Week Year has revolutionized my business would be an understatement. With the 12 Week Year it became easier to reach my goals. No more rushing at the end of the year to meet an annual number. It has actually enriched my life so I can meet my goals, provide for my family and spend more time doing the things I love away from work. As Adam discovered, measurement doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective, but it does have to be timely. In the best measurement systems, there are lead indicators and lag indicators, as we discussed in Chapter 6. The lag indicators are the end results, and your 12 week goals are the ultimate lagging indicators. If you are tracking progress towards your goals, then you are tracking lag indicators. Lead indicators are the things that happen early in the execution process. They are the things that drive the lags. Most people are pretty good at tracking the lag indicators, but the opportunity for growth is usually the greatest with the lead indicators. What are the lead indicators for your goals? Let’s say that you want to lose 10 pounds. The total weight goal of 10 pounds is a lag indicator because it happens at the end of the 12 weeks. A good lead measure might be the number of calories that you eat daily or weekly. Another might be the number of workouts you have each week, such as miles jogged, laps swum, minutes on the elliptical—you get the idea. Whatever indicators you decide to measure, be sure to track and record your progress each week of your 12 Week Year! In general, the more frequent a measure is, the more useful it is. For example, quarterly measures are typically better than annual measures. Annual measures provide feedback only once over a 12-month period, but if you are trying to improve a result and you only measure it once a year, there’s no feedback throughout the year to help you determine if your actions are productive or not. Similarly, monthly measures are better than quarterly ones. They provide more frequent feedback. Weekly is better than monthly, and daily is often better than weekly. With the 12 Week Year, we have you establish 12 week goals, so at the very least you will have a success measure that is no longer than 12 weeks.
Even so, you will be well served to identify a set of lead indicators that you can track monthly, weekly, or daily. At this point you’ve most likely set your 12 week goals, and built your 12 week plan, so now is the time to establish a set of lead and lag indicators for each of your goals. If you haven’t set your goals and created your plan, come back to this exercise after you have completed those steps. 12 Week Goal #1 Lead and Lag Indicators
12 Week Goal #2 Lead and Lag Indicators
12 Week Goal #3 Lead and Lag Indicators
Be sure to track these measures each week. Use a spreadsheet, a word table, or the “Key Measures” section of our website to help you record and monitor your progress. As we discussed in the first section of the book, the most effective lead indicator you can have is a measure of your weekly execution. It is critical
that you measure execution. We have found that if you execute a minimum of 85 percent of the actions due in your weekly plan each week, you are very likely to hit your goals at the end of the 12 weeks. Whether you use the online tool, our paper system, or a legal pad, taking time each week to measure your execution is essential. Figure 16.1 is a sample weekly scorecard from Achieve!, our suite of online tools. You can create one almost as easily using our paper-based system called Freehand. Figure 16.1 Your weekly scorecard shows the percentage of tactics that you completed in the previous week. Score an average of 85 percent or higher, and you are on track to hit your 12 week goal.
In both cases you’ll notice that what you measure on a weekly basis is the execution of your planned tactics, not your results. You simply check off or count up those tactics that you completed last week, regardless of the results you got. Let’s go back to my fitness example. My goal is to lose 10 pounds during this 12 week period. My plan includes tactics like the following: Do 20 minutes of cardio a minimum of five times a week. Train with weights three time per week. Drink at least six glasses of water each day.
Limit my calorie intake to 1,200 per day. As part of my measurement system I’m going to weigh myself each week and record my weight, but my weight is a lag indicator, so I’m also going to score my execution. To score my execution in this case, I would identify the number of tactics I completed as a percentage of the number possible. The online system Achieve! does this automatically for me. So if I complete three out of four, my weekly execution score would be 75 percent. The results measure and the execution measure are separate. In my example, I may have lost two pounds this week but still only scored 75 percent. Because the results are lagging, I want to pay close attention to both measures, and even though I lost two pounds, I did not have a good week from an execution standpoint. What that tells me is that unless I execute better next week, my weight loss will stall out. Thinking Shift This is a major shift in thinking for most people. The thinking shift is twofold. First, is the shift to embrace measurement and not to shy away from it, as is so often the case. Yes, measurement is cold and unsympathetic and at times even harsh. It discounts effort and has no regard for interruptions or distractions, or any other excuse you can muster. But in the end measurement is helpful and necessary. Without measurement there is no way for you to know, unequivocally if you are making progress. Without measurement there is no way for you to know what adjustments would be productive. Without measurement it’s virtually impossible to hit your goals. The second thinking shift is to focus more on the actions than the results. Remember, you have greater control over your actions than you do your outcomes. Your outcomes are driven by your actions. The weekly plan and the weekly scorecard are focused on your actions. The scorecard measures whether you did what you said was most important in order to achieve your goals. As a result, your weekly scorecard is the most accurate predictor of your future. If you faithfully complete the critical actions on a daily and weekly basis, the results will come. So the process is less about the end
result and more about the daily actions. That is why the scorecard only measures your execution and not your results. Team Application As a manager or leader, how you think about measurement and how you engage with it will ultimately impact your team’s productivity and results. Too many managers mistakenly think about measurement as accountability. This mind-set creates all kinds of dysfunction and barriers to high performance. When managers think this way about measurement, they tend to use it to trigger negative consequences for their direct reports. In other words, when measurement is seen as the accountability system, then managers use measurement and negative consequences to hold people accountable. In this environment, employees and associates quickly learn to avoid measurement—and their manager. The more you use measurement to trigger negative consequences, the more your team will avoid and even openly resist measurement. Measurement is not accountability; it’s simply feedback. The more effective use of measurement is as a feedback mechanism to identify breakdowns, progress, and successes. In this way measurement allows you to confront reality and breakdowns without the pushback and collateral damage associated with negative consequences. Ideally, you want the performers to measure themselves. If they rely on you to track and tally their key measures, that is often an indication of a lack of ownership on their part. Think about that. If you were really committed to your goals and had a strong desire to accomplish them, wouldn’t you track your progress? You know you have ownership when associates measure and track their own metrics. When your team is on the 12 Week Year you will want to ensure that each of them has established a set of key measures, lead and lag indicators, that they are committed to tracking. This doesn’t need to be a long list of measures, but rather just a handful of metrics that provide meaningful feedback to the individual.
In addition, with your team on the 12 Week Year, you now have the platform to coach from. Everything you need to effectively coach your people to higher performance and more consistent results is available through the 12 Week Year. One of those items is the weekly scorecard. As a manager, you’ll want to check in with how your direct reports are scoring on a weekly basis. Without even knowing the specifics of an individual’s plan, I can ascertain through their weekly score how likely it is that they will accomplish their goals. By inquiring about their weekly scores, you can know immediately if someone is at risk. If you have a direct report who scores less than 60 percent on any given week, it’s an indication that they may need some help. One score doesn’t make or break a 12 Week Year, but it certainly can be a red flag that some level of intervention is needed if the individual is to have any chance of hitting their 12 week goals. Common Pitfalls and Success Tips Once you have determined your metrics and are tracking them weekly, here are some pitfalls to avoid and tips to make the metrics work for you. Pitfall 1: You think that measurement is complicated or unimportant. Too many people use the I’m-not-a-numbers-person excuse as a reason to avoid measuring. Don’t let that be you. If you are going to perform at your best and achieve your goals, you will need to measure. Pitfall 2: You don’t schedule a block of time each week to assess your progress. Determine a time each week, either at the end of the week or the first thing Monday morning, and block this time to score your execution, track your indicators, and plan your upcoming week. For most people 10 to 15 minutes is sufficient. Pitfall 3: You abandon the system when you don’t score well. Too often people abandon the system and stop scoring when they have two bad weeks in a row. Have the courage to assess each week and don’t back down, even when you have a disappointing week.
Tip 1: Review your weekly score with a buddy or a small group of peers each week. Studies show that when people leverage teams, they get significantly more done on their plans. See the section on WAMs in chapter 15. Tip 2: Commit to make progress each week. Maybe you can’t improve your execution from 45 to 85 percent in one week, but you can move from 45 to 55 or 60 percent. Focus on making progress. The goal is to raise your level of execution each week. A weekly score that is increasing is a positive sign that bodes well for succeeding with your goals. Tip 3: Remember that a weekly score of less than 85 percent isn’t necessarily bad. A score of 65 percent might be an improvement in activity from the past 12 weeks. Even at 65 percent most people will see an improvement in their results. The question you need to ask yourself is this: “Is an execution score of 65 percent enough to accomplish my 12 week goals?” Tip 4: Don’t be afraid to confront what your numbers are telling you. If you are unwilling to confront reality, then you will never be able to change it. When you track leading indicators, your execution system will help you to identify the root causes of any performance breakdowns you may experience. When there is a breakdown in your results, you need to know if it was caused by a breakdown in your execution or your plan content. There’s a BIG difference and the only way to know for sure is by measuring both results and execution.